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It was a struggle at times for Adrian Whittle. As the lead engineer for the 2013 Ford Fusion, achieving his team’s technical goals while maintaining the integrity of designer Chris Hamilton’s sexy silhouette was something of a rolling headache.

“This exterior, which we love, was hard to deliver because it’s not very package-efficient,” Whittle explained. “There are a lot of curves and shapes and sweeps in it. And one of the things that we absolutely had as a hard point was that all of the interior dimensions had to be equal or better than the outgoing Fusion.”

Despite the challenges, Whittle and Co. got the job done, thanks in part to the new Fusion’s increased dimensions. Its 112.2-inch wheelbase is almost five inches longer than that of the outgoing car, and it’s 1.2 inches longer, 0.7 inch wider, and 1.4 inches taller than before. Front passenger headroom, legroom, shoulder space, and hip room are all improved. Rear headroom remains the same at 37.8 inches, but leg, shoulder, and hip measurements have been upped. The only dimension that shrank was the trunk’s cargo space, which dropped by 0.5 cu-ft to 16.0 cu-ft. But we’ll give Whittle a pass there, as it’s technically not part of the interior.

On the powertrain side, choice is the name of the game. There are three gas-only options. The 2.5-liter Duratec four-cylinder with 175 horses and 175 lb-ft is essentially a carryover engine, and it’s mated to a six-speed auto gearbox only. Two EcoBoosted engines are also available: the 1.6-liter four with 178-horsepower and 184 lb-ft (six-speed auto or manual), and the 240 horse, 270 lb-ft 2.0-liter EcoBoost (auto only with front- or all-wheel drive).

Then there’s the 2013 Fusion Hybrid. The system combines a 141-horsepower, 129-lb-ft 2.0-liter Atkinson cycle inline-four (replacing the 2.5-liter) with an electric traction motor producing 118 hp and 117 lb-ft using Ford‘s planetary continuously variable transmission. Total peak output of 188 hp is down by 3 hp, but then the car is about 110 pounds lighter. Of course, the measurement that really counts for the hybrid is miles per gallon. At an EPA-rated 47/47 city/highway mpg, Ford is billing it as America’s most fuel efficient midsize sedan. In addition, a plug-in model called the Fusion Energi is on the way, and with a target efficiency number of 100 mpg-e, Ford is gunning for the title of the most fuel-efficient midsize sedan in the world. Heady stuff.

Depending on trim, the Fusion lineup is slightly heavier than before, but Ford would argue the Fusion’s extra pounds are all muscle. Much of the additional weight comes from a larger body shell using high-strength steel mostly in its nose and A-B door ring. The new steel also greatly benefitted structural rigidity. Extra underbody cladding also packed on poundage but helped deliver the car’s 0.275 drag coefficient and fuel economy.

The nose utilizes high tensile and hydroformed steel, which added rigidity and gave designers some leeway. Gone are ditches running lengthwise on the now 0.1-inch-thinner roof. Extra underbody cladding also packed on poundage but helped deliver the car’s 0.275 drag coefficient and fuel economy.

Customers can choose from three trims: S, SE, and Titanium. Base 2.5-liters can be had in S ($22,495) and SE ($24,495) levels. The 1.6-liter in the SE adds $795, and the 2.0-liter adds $2250 including some forced package items, and both are available with a six-speed stick. The 2.0-liter comes standard in the Titanium model (automatic only) for $30,995 with front drive, or $32,995 with all-wheel drive. Plastic paddle shifters are only available on cars with the 2.0-liter/auto mix. The auto-equipped 1.6-liter is the sole model available with Ford’s new start-stop technology ($250).

The S trim brings Sync, power windows and locks, and AdvanceTrac to the table. Bump it up to SE and you’ll see SiriusXM radio, SecuriCode entry, and a power driver’s seat. Titanium models have all that plus push-button start, Intelligent Access, and a 12-speaker Sony stereo with MyFordTouch. Appearance and Luxury packages begin at the 1.6-liter level and offer things like 18-inch wheels, a trunk spoiler, and electrochromic mirrors. Moonroof and 19-inch footwear are Titanium-only options.

At $27,995 to start, the Fusion Hybrid is its own trim. It’s available with optional Hybrid Appearance and Luxury packages that offer heated leather seats, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, electrochromic mirrors, and 18-inch alloys.

The 2.5 S didn’t make it to the recent press event we attended, and given that Ford is banking on the 1.6-liter mill to be the volume choice, it also didn’t make it to our 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year program. But we did try out the rest.

First up: the expected big seller. Step into the 3312-pound Fusion 1.6 SE manual and the first thing you’ll notice its center stack. It’s a puzzling, hard plastic and button-littered oasis juxtaposed with a sea of soft, curvaceous materials and matte metals that have a higher grade look and feel.

There are plenty of storage spaces throughout the cabin. The instrumentation is clear; forward visibility is great; and the charcoal-black wetsuit-like material covering the seats is soft and comfortable. The front interior space is very much driver-oriented, and given that, feels somewhat tight and constrained. Rear seat space and legroom, however, were substantial for this 5-foot, 9-inch scribe. But replace me with a 6-foot-something rider and you’ll likely get complaints about side visibility and headroom.

Once on the road, the light and sometimes communicative, sometimes numb electric power-assisted steering (EPAS) is immediately noticeable. The 1.6-liter EcoBoost, though raspy and somewhat weak at the low end, offers plenty of smile-inducing grunt and attractive mechanical growls once the turbo spools above 4000 rpm. Shifts from the 6F35 manual are crisp, but throws are long; its brake pedal has an immediate pickup and progressive feel thereafter. Getting it up to 60 mph takes 8 seconds flat, and braking from the same speed to a standstill happens in 120 feet.

Strap into a 1.6 with the six-speed automatic and start-stop, and the car’s attitude changes a bit. Thanks to the heavier automatic ‘box, the 1.6 isn’t as eager to jink into bends and has a floating sensation mid-corner. More than once, the otherwise smooth transmission couldn’t find the ideal gear for optimal power delivery.

One 1.6 feature worth looking forward to is the start-stop system. It’s the first system of its kind on a Ford vehicle with an automatic transmission, officials say, and it’s good. Smooth, near-instant, and quiet startups were the norm during my drive. BMW, take note: This is how you do start-stop.

Comparing stats comes natural when talking about this Fusion trim. While less powerful than the potent 197-hp 2013 Chevrolet Malibu, the 178-horse Fusion SE, with an EPA rating of 23/36/28 city/highway/combined, sips less fuel when both are equipped with automatic gearboxes. (The Chevy is rated at 22/34/26). However, the Ford has a $2140 more expensive base price when put against the Malibu LS ($23,150); that price difference shrinks to $520 when compared to the better equipped 1LT. Throw in the Toyota Camry LE’s credentials — 25/35/28 city/highway/combined fuel economy and $23,395 base price — and you’ll understand just how cutthroat this segment really is.

The Titanium with a 2.0-liter heart, automatic gearbox, and all-wheel drive is the top dog. At 3711 pounds, it’s nearly 400 pounds heavier than the 1.6 manual, and 34 pounds heavier than the Fusion Hybrid. Its EPAS has a weightier tug at all speeds, and the chassis, with 19-inch wheels wrapped in Continental rubber (rather than standard 17- or 18-inchers), transmits a lot more of the road’s imperfections directly into the leather seats.

MyFordTouch with Sync and an 8-inch screen is part of the Titanium getup. Buttons are less in-your-face; the layout is cleaner; and controls are easy to find. High-tech extras like Ford’s Lane Keeping and Adaptive Cruise systems beep, tug, and visually warn you when pertinent things need attention.

Though it plows into corners, there’s a nice amount of grip once the chassis settles and all 240 horses and 270 lb-ft find their way to the pavement. Ford’s all-wheel drive system splits power 70/30 percent between front and rear wheels in normal driving situations, but once traction is lost, the split can change to a maximum 60/40 percent using torque vectoring via the ABS.

The automatic’s paddle shifters add to the sportiness of the Titanium, but the 1.6 manual has a better fun factor because of its chassis feel and powertrain liveliness. Still, there’s no denying the Titanium is the fastest Fusion on the block at 6.8 seconds to 60. The quarter-mile passes in 15.1 seconds at 91.6 mph, and despite the added AWD heft, its beefier brakes stop it from 60 mph in 117 feet.

The Fusion Hybrid is the most technologically advanced car in the lineup until the Energi arrives. Engineers worked tirelessly to tune and improve every exterior bit in the name of aerodynamic efficiency. They upped sound deadening and paid special attention to the smoothness of gas engine-to-electric motor transitions. Active Grille Shutters and full underbody coverings better direct the passing air. New menu screens on the digital dash coach drivers in the ways of mpg maximization, and yes, the dark green leaves still flourish or fall depending on your driving style.

It’s tough to notice the Hybrid’s transitions. They’re tabletop smooth and the interior is almost bank-vault quiet. The Hybrid rides as if it were a street-legal Lay-Z-Boy. Its steering has the most artificial assist of the lineup, and it gently rolls and bounds when pushed hard into corners. Sure, stabbing the throttle gets you to 60 mph in 8.5 seconds, but who really cares? You’ll be achieving mega mpg ratings and can cruise in complete comfort on electric power at speeds up to 62 mph.

At the end of the day, Whittle shared an interesting observation. “I’d say the Fusion is the first ground-up example of One Ford. It’s kind of the ultimate (model) that we’ve done. It sets the standard for us internally. It’s also the one that we had to get right. The Fusion is so critical to North America. This is the one that we knew we couldn’t make any compromises with.”

In other words, it’s the one model that has fused all the best ideas and technology from Ford’s worldwide operations. Will that be enough to best its competitors? Like you, we can’t wait to find out.

Efficiency with a variety of powertrain options. Exterior design: We wanted to be a leader. They were probably the big two. The final one was that we wanted to take the Mondeo’s dynamics, move those forward while fixing the ride, because the Mondeo’s traits were a lot of steering and handling against ride. And in this market you can’t really have that. We made that mistake with a few cars in the past, so that was the final thing, was to fix the ride. How to keep the exterior exactly how it was originally designed [was another].

Did you shoot for 37 mpg beforehand? Was that something that just came to be?

We ranged it, but we knew that we needed to be somewhere in the 35 to 45 range. When you’re years before (in the engineering process), you set pretty high-level targets like, say, when you focus on 40 mpg, you do small changes, get there, and continue to watch what your competitors are doing.

One that surpassed our expectations was the hybrid, though. We didn’t think we could get that (47 mpg) — especially 47 city AND 47 highway. It makes you wonder how you get to 50 mpg. That’s a much nicer number. That’s the business that we’re in – we’ll find a way.

What about the talk of bringing other variants to the U.S.?

Once we start getting capacity out of Hermosillo, then we’ll start looking at other variants. The market just doesn’t seem to be going that way — that’s the only thing. You know in the company we love our wagons. In Europe, they’re over 50 percent of the mix. It’s amazing there’s been a big shift in C/D-sized sedan – about 70 percent for us was wagons. So we put a lot of effort into getting it right for Europe. It’s a beautiful car, but honestly, I just don’t see it for the U.S. market. But maybe… You know, you never say never. The car’s global, and we can easily get that car federalized if we wanted it here.

What about bringing a diesel?

Same thing. It’s exactly the same thing. We’re watching VW and Audi and they’re pushing [diesel] but they’re not really getting anywhere with that strategy. I think this market is going to move to more and more electrified.

[Diesels] are more expensive with all the technology that cleans them up: particulate traps and Ox filters, etc. Generally speaking, that’s probably $2000 added; well, that’s the cost of a lithium-ion battery. So you can see how the markets go different ways.

So many of the testers today have black interiors. Any other color option?

Yep, we call it June. About 20 percent of our mix is supposed to be June, 80 percent black. And that’s pretty much free customer demand. They just choose it as an option. It doesn’t cost them anything.

How much of the Mondeo is Fusion and vice versa?

They’re about 80 percent similar. A little bit of the front structure is different to satisfy the European legal differences. Which, you know, aren’t so different in terms of high-speed crash, but Europe has pedestrian protection crash requirements, which, if you want to be a five-star car, you have to do well in that. So there are a few differences built into the car for that.

But other than that, it’s really a common car. Everything you touch is pretty much the same part.

And then the two body styles. We do a wagon and a five-door hatch for Europe. Three body styles but we sell half the total volume that we do here. Europe is a difficult market because, you know, Germans are different than Brits and they’re different than Italians.

Each of the countries has a domestic manufacturer that kind of sets the agenda. It’s hard to compete in Europe effectively. Ford does a good job, however.

There was some talk in the world press that we used our Aston connections to design this shape, but we didn’t. It’s really just the way we wanted to move towards.

I lived day in and day out next to lead designer Chris Hamilton for the first couple years that we were sorting it out, and he was never looking at design photos of Astons.

Was it difficult to meet your engineering goals with such a stylized form?

Yes, it was actually. This exterior, which we love, was hard to deliver because it’s not very package-efficient. It’s very silhouetted — there are a lot of curves and shapes and sweeps in it. And one of the things that we absolutely had as a hard point was that all of the interior dimensions had to be equal or better than the outgoing Fusion. And actually, we stretched it to be equal or better than the Camry as well. So keeping that exterior design while keeping the space inside was really tough.

The other thing that was quite hard was to get that shape to have such a low drag coefficient, because we needed the drag well below 0.30 to get to the fuel economy we were looking for. It’s got such a big impact on fuel usage.

That shape is quite hard to get the drag we were looking for, so a lot of work was put into the lights. It’s one of the reasons why the mirrors went down onto the doors; there’s underbody shielding throughout, which is expensive and nobody gets to see it. It’s kind of like the last place you want to put your money, but sometimes you need to because it delivers the attribute you’re looking for.

So yeah, it was tough holding onto the design.

Is the Hybrid’s underbody very different than those of the gasoline models?

No pretty it’s much the same. The only thing with the Hybrid is that it’s got every single aero tweak that we can give it so there is 100 percent shielding, even down to little tiny ones that we didn’t put onto the gas models. Active Grille Shutters, which are on some of the gas models, but are on all of the hybrid models.

Can you explain Active Grille Shutters?

The big grille opening at the front — if you have no choice, it’s got to be fully open all the time to suit the requirements for when you need maximum cooling, which is wide open throttle, going uphill, and in hot weather. But most of the time — 90 percent of the time — you can shut them down because the car isn’t demanding so much cooling. You close the grille shutters and you’ll get about 0.10 Cd aero improvement. The air instead of going through the engine gets blocked and goes over the car which is a much better place to send it.

Other than that, the hybrid is largely the same car. We kind of tried to kind of view the Hybrid as a powertrain option, rather than sort of like Prius which is a whole new car and body style. [Inside] in general, we didn’t want to clutter the interface, too [with hybrid-specific menus and buttons].

How has One Ford gone thus far? Is engineering a car easier?

Well, we’re getting there. I was the chief engineer on the Focus and that was really the first effort to getting a global car going under Alan Mulally. And that was tough because we were still very different engineering centers in Germany, Britain, Ford of Europe, and North America.

But with this car it kind of all came together because we’ve got, like, Derrick Kuzak that took over the whole of product development globally, and Raj Nair that has now got his new job here, and so everything is kind of lined up now. It’s getting easier. We’ve now got one set of standards to meet; we know what we’re trying to do.

So I think you see this car kind of really pulls it all together. And from now on, it’ll just get easier and easier.

I would say the Focus was hard work. It really was, kind of, “Is it a European car? Is it a North American car? What are the priorities?” We ended up getting there but it was hard process and eventually things got easier.

I’d say it is the first ground-up example [of One Ford]. It’s kind of the ultimate one that we’ve done. It sets the standard for us internally.

It’s also the one that we had to get right. The Fusion is so critical to North America. This is the one that we knew we couldn’t make any compromises with.

There is a lot of interest in Europe about whether One Ford will dumb down some of the European flavor of the car. Because Ford of Europe moved a long way about a decade ago, from bland cars that were just cheap, to expressive cars that tried to stand for something. And the thing that we wanted to stand for was really driving dynamics. So we had a boss over there named Richard Parry-Jones — a pretty well-known guy, ex-rally driver. And I think that’s the sort of thing you see a lot of in Europe.

The Focus, I think a lot of people say that it held onto its core attributes: dynamics of the car. But that was engineered in Europe. Now the question in peoples’ minds is, Well now, let’s see how a car that’s engineered in North America will be like. Because you know, like in every country, there’s a prejudice about what different markets care about.

It’s really hard to explain how driving in Europe is different than driving in the U.S. You do it and you kind of know it. To try to understand it, I don’t know — it’s the way the roads are, the curbs, the way other people are driving around you. Some 70 percent of people are driving manuals, so that causes a different flow of traffic.

Horsepower

2013 Ford Fusion News and Reviews

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